George Yancy: Black Men Endured Sexual Exploitation Under Slavery. Their Story Is Rarely Told.
There were no legal protections against the rape of enslaved Black women or enslaved Black men.
Woody Lewis: Sally Hemings and the Road to Curdsville
I have memories of the apartheid signs on all the restaurants and public facilities. A white person who grew up in the area at that time recently corrected me: “Those weren’t apartheid signs, those were Jim Crow signs.”
Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Audio: Dr. Martin Luther King — Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Gwendolyn B. Bennet: Four Poems
Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
Audio: Danez Smith reads “not an elegy for Mike Brown”
I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
Video: Goodbye, Morganza
Devon Blackwell’s short documentary explores how her great-grandparents lost the house they had owned since 1892, and the impact of that loss on generations of her family.
Video: Play Hard
Nate, a workaholic drummer, spends all his time practicing in pursuit of perfection. When he meets Yazmine, a like-minded, dedicated modern dancer, he realizes that the key to success isn’t just to work hard – sometimes it requires you to play hard.
Ellen Bryant Voigt | At the Movie: Virginia, 1956
When finally we got our own TV, the evening news
with its hooded figures of the Ku Klux Klan
seemed like another movie
Daniella Toosie-Watson: A Series of Small Miracles
Listen: in this poem, there are no men.
I give to myself & give again.
George Yancy: Trump’s Education Plan Seeks to Make Cruel Domination Into “Common Sense”
Control the curriculum and you control the range of ideas that people are exposed to. This is why schooling is inherently political.
Audio: Son House performing County Farm Blues
Put you under a man called “Captain Jack”
Put you under a man they call “Captain Jack”
He’ll sure write his name up and down your back
Video: Eternity
Valerie and Alan have been married 57 years. Eternity is a look at love that lasts a lifetime, whether they like it or not.
Joseph Bathanti: Cletis Pratt
First man I ever saw in irons,
wearing nothing but a pair of scurvy white
long john britches, was Cletis Pratt
